Has The 5-Yd Pass Replaced the Handoff?

[jobberone]

I hope so because when you have to throw 50+ little passes a game, eventually 1-3 things are going to go wrong, like a pick 6 for starters.. There were a few drops by the defenders nobody is talking about either...

You're right about it being tough to drive a long field with short passes and an inconsistent running game.

I'm concerned about Romo having time and not finding targets.

 

[CF74]

You're right about it being tough to drive a long field with short passes and an inconsistent running game.

I'm concerned about Romo having time and not finding targets.

Dude you're just being a "Hater" now..

 

[jobberone]

Dude you're just being a "Hater" now..

Man, I get called a pollyanna a good bit but I really try to look at both sides.

 

[Blackspider214]

In some regards it has. Patriots ran this a lot tonight. Their leading WR had like 13 catches but only for 70 some odd yards. This is just a little over 5 a catch.

 

[Idgit]

Another cleverly disguised Romo bashing thread. Sweet!

Cleverly disguised?

 

[T-RO]

If you were insured of 5 yards per rush...why not the equivalent of a ridiculously low risk pass that nets the equivalent...or (in truth) a yard or two more? Diversified passing will replace the dying embers of NFL's celebrated, but now irrelevant running game.

If you want to thing of the the glory of the running game...think of Michael J Fox and NBC's ill-fated attempt to revive what once was. And I say this with no disrespect to Mr. Fox's disability, talent or greatness.

 

[Fredd]

I hope so because when you have to throw 50+ little passes a game, eventually 1-3 things are going to go wrong, like a pick 6 for starters.. There were a few drops by the defenders nobody is talking about either...

well, to be fair, we had our own problem with the dropsies (see: Williams)

 

[03EBZ06]

Another cleverly disguised Romo bashing thread. Sweet!

Actually those fans are from being clever, they very transparent and elementary.

 

[dwmyers]

As a side note Walsh was a Brown protege and he went to SF but couldn't install the read offense i.e. the vertical offense. The reason was he didn't have the personnel to run it. What he did was by necessity dink and dunk the ball down the field and morph it into an offense that was essentially a horizontal timing/read offense.

The origin of the WCO was in Cincinnati, when Bill Walsh was the OC and they had lost Greg Cook and replaced him with Virgil Carter. Glen had a HOF arm but bad luck with his injuries. Carter was smarter than strong armed. They had to go horizontal because their new QB couldn't throw a vertical game.

The WCO was already in place by the time Walsh made it to SF. He was using a version of it when he was the head coach at Stanford. And for those of us who grew up in Louisiana, it's fairly easy to recall what the 1977 Cardinals did to the LSU Tigers, despite the Tigers having one of the best college running backs of his era, Charles Alexander. Sun Bowl. 24-14 win for Walsh.

BTW, not making up this history. Check out Jaworski's book, "The Games that Changed the Game", pp 121-123.

 

[dwmyers]

For those who weren't around in the early to mid 1980s, when you have the right kind of players and the right kind of team (Commanders of the era), then you short pass and occasionally run to set up the bomb. The Skins were a dink and dunk team, run at ya team till they pulled all your defenders in tight. Then they threw over your heads.

At the end of the game they ran you into the ground. Having a great OL helps in that regard.

 

[03EBZ06]

Last night, Tom Brady was 19/39 for 185 Yds, 48.7 Comp% for whopping 4.7 YPA

 

[kruddy]

Well, the NFL Channel just put up a graphic showing the Cowboys are 9-0 when DeMarco carries the ball 20 or more times, 4-11 when he carries it less than 20 times. So, at least with the Cowboys, there would appear to be a good reason to hand it off rather than throw it short, at least 20 times a game.

 

[kruddy]

I also think this is one problem that exists on our team, but the inane dribble that pours from our owner>g.m. hahahaha, puts bulletin board fire in each of our opponents lockeroom. I am sure each coach laughs at his behavior daily...........It only makes our future bleaker and tears down what coach Garrett is trying to accomplish putting on what he thinks good day on another in large gashes. The league hates us and now America hates us.JERRY JONES has nearly undone single handed what was a mighty franchise. Ask verne Lundquist are anyone associated with our team during our ascent to the top..

 

[jobberone]

The origin of the WCO was in Cincinnati, when Bill Walsh was the OC and they had lost Greg Cook and replaced him with Virgil Carter. Glen had a HOF arm but bad luck with his injuries. Carter was smarter than strong armed. They had to go horizontal because their new QB couldn't throw a vertical game.

The WCO was already in place by the time Walsh made it to SF. He was using a version of it when he was the head coach at Stanford. And for those of us who grew up in Louisiana, it's fairly easy to recall what the 1977 Cardinals did to the LSU Tigers, despite the Tigers having one of the best college running backs of his era, Charles Alexander. Sun Bowl. 24-14 win for Walsh.

BTW, not making up this history. Check out Jaworski's book, "The Games that Changed the Game", pp 121-123.

You're right. I forgot about Walsh going to Cincinati where he played under Brown. I was misremembering it being Cleveland not Cincinnati since he was with Brown. That was the beginning of it and it was Carter and the inept Bengals who forced him into going short. Carter was too inaccurate to run the vertical well. I'm getting senile. He ran into the same problem in SF with no personnel to run a vertical game. But he got Montana in ?80 and morphed it into what we know as the WCO. It's still a blend of the horizontal and vertical game. He also learned the vertical offense from Davis who learned it from Gillman but it was Brown who invented it not Gillman. I went back and read a little bit and I'd also forgotten he got started under Marv Levy.

We ran what is basically a modified WCO against the Giants out of necessity although I don't know why they don't use more horizontal patterns to complement the intermediate game in more games. I guess I just don't know enough to know why.

Do you know why Brown disliked him so much?

Thanks for keeping me straight.

 

[kruddy]

I am sorry post #33 should be in the rant section I did not mean to undermine the thread. It will not happen again, I hope .

 

[jobberone]

I am sorry post #33 should be in the rant section I did not mean to undermine the thread. It will not happen again, I hope .

No problem. It's ok to post in related tangents off topic. It's normal for a thread to drift and get 'subthreads' within a thread. It's when it gets out of hand that's the problem or the entire thread is hijacked that it gets moderated.

 

[LittleBoyBlue]

I don't like dink and dunk all the time.

Leaves defenders too close to LOS... to close to Romo.

 

[dwmyers]

You're right. I forgot about Walsh going to Cincinati where he played under Brown. I was misremembering it being Cleveland not Cincinnati since he was with Brown. That was the beginning of it and it was Carter and the inept Bengals who forced him into going short. Carter was too inaccurate to run the vertical well. I'm getting senile. He ran into the same problem in SF with no personnel to run a vertical game. But he got Montana in ?80 and morphed it into what we know as the WCO. It's still a blend of the horizontal and vertical game. He also learned the vertical offense from Davis who learned it from Gillman but it was Brown who invented it not Gillman. I went back and read a little bit and I'd also forgotten he got started under Marv Levy.

We ran what is basically a modified WCO against the Giants out of necessity although I don't know why they don't use more horizontal patterns to complement the intermediate game in more games. I guess I just don't know enough to know why.

Do you know why Brown disliked him so much?

Thanks for keeping me straight.

Walsh felt that after Brown retired, that he deserved to be named head coach of the Bengals. Brown named Bill "Tiger"Johnson instead, perhaps feeling that Walsh was too moody/difficult to be the best possible head coach for the Bengals. Further, Brown wanted Walsh to be Johnson's OC, remain in the same role he was currently in. Bill took this an an insult, thought Brown was telling him he wasn't "tough enough" to be a HC, and resigned. Brown was a controlling type and didn't take the loss well, reacting pretty much the same way he did with players who left his team to go to Canadian football in the 1950s.

I don't know which NFL network talking head once compared Landry and Brown, but the comparison was: "Landry had no ego, but Brown had a huge ego." Brown could be very vindictive if you crossed him.

As it turns out (read "The Genius" sometime) Walsh was an emotional coach, and came close to quitting the 49ers on more than one occasion before he finally did. Brown probably made the wrong call but Lord knows how long Bill Walsh would have stayed with the Bengals. As it is, Bill's setup with the 49ers was equivalent to Brown's with the Cleveland Browns in the pre-Modell days, that of an absolute dictator who had total control over football operations. Like football father, like football son.

How much of the WCO is simply modernized 1940s-50s Browns football is hard to say, as Brown invented professional coaching as we now know it. It was, in its day, a passing offense with ball control as a major priority. Otto Graham had completion percentages that resembled much more modern ball, and Brown was big on tall, fast, intelligent receivers, and didn't really run very much (look at Marion Motley's average carries per game). Dr Z makes the point it was several years before Walsh had total control over the offense, and the likelihood that Brown had substantial input into the original form of the WCO is about 100%.

All that said, we live in an era where people think Bill Walsh invented the pro set, where Kobe Bryant is the #2 basketball player of all time, right behind Jordan. The disconnect between Bill and Paul has led to folks not having a clue just how good Paul Brown was. But Paul's amazing record of professional football success.. in every championship game from 1946 to 1955.. left him more than a little egoistic, a little set in his ways, and some of his peculiarities (he didn't like audibles, for one) hurt his teams later on.

 

[pansophy]

Well, the NFL Channel just put up a graphic showing the Cowboys are 9-0 when DeMarco carries the ball 20 or more times, 4-11 when he carries it less than 20 times. So, at least with the Cowboys, there would appear to be a good reason to hand it off rather than throw it short, at least 20 times a game.

This is the classic example of correlation does not equal causation. We are winning those games and so we run the ball to take time off the clock. When we are losing we have to pass more.

Not saying that we don't need to be more effective running the ball, especially in the red zone. But this stat is not evidence for that.

 

[CF74]

And now a little parody prediction about the Chiefs game:

Chiefs take away short pass and get 20 coverage sacks leading to 10 forced fumbles and fumble recoveries as Romo, with all day protection, consistently tries to find a RB open 3 yards down field. Even his BFF (Witten) is blanketed. Near end, resorts to all laterals for losses - almost has one picked but the defender dropped it. Dallas defense steps up and doesn't allow a TD though, but even with that, Chiefs roll.

Chiefs 33
Dallas 14 (Two defensive TD's)

After the game, Romo says he tried to take what the defense was giving him, but there really wasn't anything they didn't have covered. Meanwhile no comment from any of the WR's who were mostly wide open 20 - 30 yards down the field the entire game. Garrett stated Tony has a few things to work out. Jeb stated the line still isn't giving Romo enough time and he'd like to see us use Danny McCray at WR.









JK

24-27 Dallas wins.